urban occupation : berlin

Finally, and shortly before the end of the semester: a blog entry concerning the relation of subjectivity and objectivity – or, if you wish, the position of the individual in the society – mirrored in four up-to-date texts emerged from German pop culture (if there is such a thing).

The first one was written by an artist called PeterLicht, a musician, writer and graphic artist who’s currently working in theatre. The Song is called “Räume räumen” (“clearing rooms” or “To clear rooms”).
I apologize for the bumpy translation that consequently ignores any measure/metre or rhyme.

clearing rooms

The room is full but no one is here
This here reaches me, reaches me not
My day doesn’t have as many seconds
as I would need in order to say my ‘no’, my ‘no’s’:

No no no, no no, no, no no, no no, no no, no, no, no.

The room is full but noone is here
who disturbs is thrown, thrown out out out
disturbing, flying and clearing rooms
I don’t have to be here, here I don’t even want to be missed
better outside on the roads in september rain, the warm rain.

No no no, no no, no, no no, no no, no no, no, no, no.

I think whoever I see ought to be happy
We like the land, we acupuncture the ground
we massage the streets, we cream the houses
we mop the cities, we cool the motors
we like the land, we acupuncture the ground
with big stealbars
with big stealbars

we anoint the concrete, we yoke(join) the wires
we console the machines, we talk to the membranes
we’re laying our hands on infrastructure
with big hands
with big hands

And then your picture in the clouds and the wind from above
You there - I here
with big hearts
with big hearts

Yes yes yes
yes yes
yes
yes yes yes yes
yes yes
yes
yes yes yes yes
yes yes

Let’s be happy
or be lost
Let’s get smaller
on the horizon
I don’t see anything else
on the horizon
Let’s go further
than our eyes can see
I don’t see anything else
but in a distant prospect lots of light
in a distant prospect lots of light

in a distant prospect lots of light

Interpretation (an attempt):
The album on which the song appeared is called “Melancholy and Society” (also title of an essay about the ‘prohibition of melancholy’ in Utopia, by Wolf Lepenies, a Sociologist at FU Berlin,).
The title reflects on the larger context in which PeterLicht is currently moving about: the loss of utopian impulses in society and the retreat into private, even bourgeois, environment.
So the seemingly paradox complaint that “the room is full but no one is here” might reflect on both the growing individualization and lack of ‘political engagement’ and, at the same time, the growing super-supply with information.
The second verse is perhaps quite simply lamenting the loss of room for experiment, the unusual, the useless…
The beautiful and sort of architecturesque third verse is maybe an ironic take on the violent yet utterly helpless way in which we try to shape our environment?
The end could be understood as an invitation to leave the tragic and stuck present and move on towards something we don’t know yet – still, it seems promising.
(this might be a little enigmatic unless you know other lyrics of PeterLicht dealing with the end respectively the recommencement of history).

We are many

we are many
every single one of us
we are many
every secret wish
we are many
our name is legion
we are many
a whole lexicon
we are many
we are like orgon-energy
we are many
a crazy phantasy

this could happen to me, I know I know I know
this could happen to you, you know you know you know

we are many
nothing binds us to nothing
we are many
useless for you and me
we are many
bad weed that grows tall
we are many
committing petty crimes

this could happen to us, I know I know I know
that’s a way to live here you know you know you know

we could touch right now right now right now
we could bloom silently right now right now right now

we are many
forever foreign to each other
we are many
states that everybody knows
something like a good advice:
If you say ‘I’ you haven’t said a thing
tenthousand things at a time
a signal to each other
plant, animal and mineral
our souls arrow and lightning and dream
even though we hardly know ourselves
we are blind and deaf and mute
nothing but guff and excrescence
in us around us surrounding us
we are the world that grows in hollow
the wind that constantly turns
the song that sings itself
because we forget we are men

we are many
we are many
…

we are many
every single one of us
we are many
every secret wish

Conspirate against yourself

conspirate against yourself
and your pain will ease
be happy, cause you are alone
and close to the wild heart you will be

conspirate against yourself
and your wounds will open up
don’t wonder, you know for sure
in this war every trick is allowed

You don’t have to show what you can
You mustn’t say what you think
They shouldn’t know how you feel
take all this as your present

conspirate against yourself
the enemies will surrender
by themselves, as you have the air of power
they put a rose petal beneath your bed

conspirate against yourself
and your pain will ease
be happy, close your eyes
noone who will sense the same as you

You don’t have to show what you can
You mustn’t say what you think
No conscience afflicting you
No foreign power guiding you

You don’t have to show what you can
You mustn’t say what you think
They shouldn’t know how you feel
take all this as your present

You don’t have to show what you can
You mustn’t say what you think
No conscience afflicting you
No foreign power guiding you

Imitations

Imitations of you
reside in me
Imitations of you
confederate with me
touch and accompany me
say “There is no true I”
feel and regret nothing
spit into the deniers’ faces

Your good is my good
Your beautiful is my beautiful
Your true is my true

Imitations of you
recur in me
imitations of you
knock on the door
and gently they talk at me:
“You don’t have to be yourself”
and gently they talk at me:
“we will free you from yourself”

your bad is my bad
your sad is my sad
your sad is my SO SAD

You have travelled so far
in zigzag through time
nowhere to stay
sometimes only adoing through dreams
Almost through the whole world
you are appointed to me
Almost through the whole world
you are appointed to me

your good is my good
your beautiful is my beautiful
your true is my true
your bad is my bad
your sad is my sad
your sad is my SO SAD

Three variations of an old topic: Who am I, and what separates me from the others. Or, in a more modern language: the relation between objectivity and subjectivity (which we have been talking about extensively in the context of Latour and of Serres’ ‘Quasi-objects’).
The first one is a euphoric celebration of the possibilities that lie within each and every human being, the magic of diversity and the new beginning, and, last not least: of the beautiful and oscillating empire of uselessness.
The second one has a more serious undertone, it deals with the necessities and fears that result from the fact that in our everyday life we are usually considered (and often make the mistake of considering ourselves) to be that unbearable ONE PERSON.
Luckily, the song is providing us with a strategy to fight that fixation: I am not one of you – I am just one among you.
The third song is sneakily hiding the problem of subject-object in what on first sight appears to be a simple, almost dull love song.

All songs taken from the album “Kapitulation”, 2008.
Should be possible to listen to / watch them on youtube:
Imitationen
Verschwör Dich gegen Dich
Wir sind Viele

Of course, the interpretations are incomplete and probably only half-accurate. Feel free to see anything else in the lyrics.

The quasi object seems to be a third element that relates, or defines the perspective from which to read, the ‘reciprocal determination between the subject and object’.  I am unclear as to whether this quasi object could also be thought of as the noise or the filter. If the noise is the ‘entropic’ quality in a system then perhaps the quasi object can be both (noise and filter). In this model, it can create a new way to read the relationship between the subject and the object by creating the interference, or it can change what is allowed to emerge from the unchanging constant interference. The quasi object only defines the group through movement, as soon as stasis is achieved the individual is created. It seems to be acting here as both the noise (of the collective) and then the filter (when it stands comes to rest).  Cybernetics, as defined by the founder Norbert Wiener, is the control and communication in the animal and the machine, and underlying this is the idea that all control/communication systems can be described and understood using the same language and concepts.  Perhaps the noise is the just the differing element between all systems, and the varying quasi object are the markers of different systems.

Materiality in terms of what the building is constructed of, and ones knowledge of how these materials work, could be said to be the art of the architect.  Materiality is also beyond what the substance is made of and its scientific properties (ie. concrete = grey solid matrix with compressive strength x etc.)  I think perhaps it’s also about a sense of the substance beyond the visual. Kahn’s statement of ‘what a thing wants to be’ implies something beyond an artefact man can shape and mould to his pleasure. The Japanese Zen gardens and Emperial Chinese gardens place  great emphasis on the nature of the rock, where the artisan garden creator is skilled at listening to the rock and positioning it in relationship to the ground and other rocks that is deemed harmonious.  This example is interesting when placing this practice in the ANT context, where it is not the fact that it is a rock that is important, rather its ‘inherent’ relationship to other objects around that informs the developed aesthetic.  Perhaps the desires of the natural materials have been overcome with the creation of the synthetic, where one machinates and programs the behaviour or will of the material.

Even the word building, being  a verb, implies an action, so the building of a building implies an object in constant flux. One can think of the end point of construction as a  transiently static object, but it then goes on to be inhabited, but is there a certain ‘deadness to this’? Is it because there are fewer actants involved?  Could this explain the apparent ‘eery deadness’ that at least I feel from the suburbs. Maybe its just the density of the actants there, and the nuclear family’s diy boom is an attempt to increase the ‘construction’ and increase the network.

The way architecture was described as the construction phase as opposed to the completed static object was interesting. It made me think about how one could design a building that never becomes the static object, however using the Serres analogy, it is possible to view each building is the ‘I’ and the city is the ‘we’ so on a larger scale the city is  infact the architecture, and the collective population are the architects.  On a similar thought about construction versus the end product, i can only assume, but it seems like the drive for people to procreate is orientated to the idea of construction. One never set out to create a static human (which means depth), but to engage and have relationships to this new object like a building. Where the doctors, the teachers, the politicians, the grandparents etc are the equivalent to the concretor, glazier, drafter, and crane driver.

We are going to undertake a somewhat difficult project this week, we are going to read an essay from Michel Serres’s book, The Parasite. The chapter is called, “Theory of the Quasi Object”. This essay will offer us another way of thinking about objects, subjects and relations. Serres sets up a distinction of either/or between being and relation. This distinction between being and relation quickly turns out to be unstable, which results in these strange, swerving objects/subjects that Serres names quasi-objects and quasi-subjects. The conjunction of ‘quasi’ with object and subject suggests the perpetual mobility and transfer of these deceptively stable individuals along passages of relation toward the possibility of the formation of collectives of all kinds.

A brief explanation of the title of Serres’s book might help, a book that was originally published in French as Le Parasite. In French this terms has three meanings: 1. biological parasite; 2. social parasite; and 3. noise. Noise is a term from information and systems theory to describe the interference that occurs when a message is being transferred between a sender and a recipient along some channel. Serres argues that noise, which we can also call nonsense, disorder, chaos, is fundamental to the transfer of a message: this would seem contrary to what we would normally understand noise to be, that is, merely a nuisance. Serres draws out the positive quality of noise or interference to suggest that it is out of noise that new systems and patterns, and perhaps even new ways of thinking can emerge.

Serres’s essay will allow us to continue a discussion we began last week about Actor-Network Theory (ANT), where neither the actor (human and non-human), nor the network are given precedence, but both assume the possibility, and emerge concurrently with the building of relations. It is interesting for us to consider why Serres begins his essay with the question of what is a collective and how this can be distinguished from an individual, or else how the collective and the individual turn out to have an intimate, often unstable relationship: an individual merges into a collective and out of a collective an individual can emerge. It would be worthwhile thinking of the very material impact of this intertwining of collective and individual. What can we do with this relation, as designers and architects, with respect to the occupation and activation of public space?

Reading tips: approach this essay as though it were a performance of noise and meaning intertwining to produce new relations between ideas. Serres moves swiftly and collects a great many references: read this excerpt from The Parasite as a performative essay-poem!

Michel Serres, quasi-object

Through a series of essays architectural theorist (and anti-theory representative!), Michael Speaks draws out a distinction between innovation and novelty, or originality. Where innovation, which is part of a process that contributes to what Speaks calls ‘design intelligence’, assumes that architecture is a research-based business, originality and the avant-gardist pursuit of the novel or original assumes that architecture is a medium of artistic expression. Speaks elaborates on innovation as resulting from an approach to problems (let’s say a given architectural brief) that does not take the problem as a given, but adds something more to the problem, or elaborates upon it. Here a distinction between mere problem-solving and innovation comes into play. By augmenting a design problem, and by seeking solutions to the problem through proto-types, material tests, and so forth, design intelligence is gradually, incrementally, increased. The idea is that each time a new [design] problem is addressed, the design intelligence that has been accumulated from past, hands-on experience places the designer in a better position to address the problem. In contrast the myth of the creative genius, and the figure of the architect as author is challenged. Instead the architect can be seen to always act within a greater, more complex network that includes a number of actors, other architects, engineers, materials specialists, local council, clients, users, etc!

The now rather controversial essay by Somol and Whiting, Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism, which has stirred a considerable amount of debate since its publication in 2002, seems to argue with Speaks in forwarding a projective approach to architecture. They counter criticality with projective architecture and build their argument around a series of binary pairs: index vs diagram; dialectics vs Doppler hot vs cool. The latter term in each of these pairs is the one they wish to argue for, and in making their argument they call on such diverse theorists, thinkers, and philosophers as Gilles Deleuze (diagrammatics) and implicitly, C. S. Pierce with respect to their account of the index; Marshal McLuhan (hot=high definition vs cool=low definition); and so on. Rem Koolhaas is exemplary in the context of their argument for the Doppler effect, as he employs force and effect with the promise of forming new forms of collectivity, as distinct from Peter Eisenman and K.Michael Hay’s different arguments addressing the autonomy of the discipline of architecture (is architecture a cultural product or a discrete autonomous discipline?) and concerning process, as well as issues of representation.

Some terms we had to disentangle in Somol and Whiting’s article included the difference, after semiotician, C. S. Pierce, between sign, icon and index. Where the sign always has some relation to a referent in a world, but does not necessarily resemble the thing out their that it signifies (also, the sign may refer to an idea, and not  thing as such ‘out there’; the icon is a sign that bears a discernible resemblance to the referent it refers to. Finally the index, which is the term that Somol and Whiting are using to discuss critical architecture and its failings, is, in their terms, a physically driven sign that combines materialism with signification. So, for example, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion is both a material work of architecture (a reconstructed version of which you can visit in Barcelona), but at the same it signifies ideas or concepts about architecture that seem to escape the given material of the building itself, potentially displacing our attention from the pavilion to a history and theory of architecture, processes of design, and questions of representation, and so forth. Of course, you could probably suggest that any built form also operates as an index, but what Somol and Whiting what to do is counter this effect with the action of the diagram, or diagrammatics. Where the ‘index’ is the trace of the real the ‘diagram’ is the force of the virtual, Somol and Whiting suggest. By forwarding and argument for the diagrammatic Somol and Whiting are wanting to demote (critical) architecture’s fixation on representation, and consider an architecture that acts into the socius opening up the possibility of new modes of behaviour, new ways in which multiplicities of actors connect up, and new forms of collectivity. The risk of this is an insidious slide into a repressive biopolitics whereby architecture comes to operate as a device that imposes forms on the socius, considered as clusters of docile bodies.

The concept of the diagram is being drawn explicitly from the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze, who discusses the diagram in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, and in Foucault, amongst other places. Deleuze and Guattari frequently use diagrams in their books to elaborate on concepts, but the concept of the diagram or diagrammatic action needs to be distinguished from diagrams as we commonly understand them. The diagram activates the virtual in that it does not attempt to represent what is already known (or the ‘real’), instead the diagram as a process opens up the potential of unexpected forms and concepts; it is an activating force that resists cliché, illustration and mere habit. Perhaps this is a concept we will need to elaborate upon further?

The sci-fi book I was talking about today is called the The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin.